Spokane City Hall aims to overhaul city homelessness laws with June 16 vote

Two months after the state Supreme Court overturned Spokane’s voter-approved anti-homeless camping law, the Spokane City Council is set to overhaul its suite of homelessness laws in a way supporters argue simplifies and streamlines the law, but that critics call either toothless or too sharp.

The flagship ordinance is Mayor Lisa Brown’s proposed replacement for Proposition 1, which voters approved in 2023 by a roughly 50-point margin to outlaw camping within 1,000 feet of a school, park or playground. Advocates argued the law was meant to protect children, creating a complicated patchwork of enforcement areas that covered most of the city.

On April 17, the state Supreme Court overturned the law on technical grounds, arguing it had exceeded the legal limits for local initiatives, without ruling on the merits of the law itself.

While some immediately pushed for the law to be reinstated verbatim through the City Council, Brown pushed forward a law that would replace Prop 1’s jigsaw enforcement areas with a citywide ban on camping – but with significantly more emphasis on warnings and enrolling people into addiction and behavioral health treatment.

Under Brown’s replacement plan, officers would give anyone illegally camping on public property up to seven days’ notice ahead of any enforcement action. During that time, the city’s homeless outreach team and other service providers would offer services to the camper, and would not write them a ticket if they accept the offer of help. The law also would not be enforceable if the person simply left the area and did not return until after the officer left.

In the limited cases where someone would not meet these or other exemptions, violations would be a misdemeanor referred to a therapeutic court. Prop 1 violations were also a cite-and-release misdemeanor offense.

Given the wide leeway afforded to people illegally camping under the proposal, Brown has already faced criticism as functionally giving people a seven-day camping permit.

“The idea of a seven-day pass on camping, that’s crazy,” Richard Repp, a corporate attorney, said at a recent council meeting. “It’s also insulting to the 73% of voters who passed Prop 1.”

In an interview Friday, Brown called her proposal a “balanced approach” between supportive and punitive measures, saying she believes her critics misunderstand what it would entail.

Downtown, her administration argues most complaints about the homeless could still be immediately addressed by an obstruction law her administration has proposed to replace “pedestrian interference.” In either the current or replacement framework, it is illegal to sit, lay down or place one’s property in a way that block’s the public’s access, such as on a sidewalk. Notably, the obstruction law would not result in a ticket if the person accepts services or leaves when asked by an officer.

While a few have testified that these laws go too far to criminalize homelessness, many of Brown’s frequent critics have argued these proposals would water down enforcement and focus too much on services. In turn, Brown has argued Prop 1 did little but push people from one neighborhood to another, sweeping them out of sight without ever attempting to get someone permanently off the street.

“It simply works,” Brown said of her administration’s approach. “It’s the standard we’re using for our encampment resolution program, and it has led to a much higher rate of success when navigating people and their belongings to an appropriate location that can be a step-off point for future movement off the streets.”

Still, many want jail to be a bigger part of the solution.

Jerry Schwab, a retired mental health clinician, former director of counseling at Catholic Charities and current head of the Gabriel’s Challenge adopt-a-block program, argued to the City Council that Spokane isn’t providing sufficient services to the homeless. But he also believes the city isn’t adequately criminalizing the relatively small portion committing most of the crimes, pointing to limited data from a Spokane Police Department downtown emphasis initiative last summer.

Many, though not all, of those contacted during the initial Crisis Outreach, Response and Engagement initiative, or CORE, were homeless. Police made contact with 143 individuals over four weeks who collectively had 2,192 prior local arrests – but half of that arrest record belonged to just 22 “frequent flyers,” as police Chief Kevin Hall described them at the time.

In many cases, the people victimized by these crimes are themselves homeless, Schwab pointed out.

“I know a guy who gets his phone stolen every week when he sleeps during the day because he’s dead out,” Schwab said. That man needs a safe place to sleep during the day, but the people regularly stealing from him also need to be arrested, he said.

Much of the police response to homelessness under Brown’s administration, including through the CORE program and embedded in the reforms being considered June 16, have a strong emphasis on diversion from jail and into treatment services. This strategy has faced criticism from many, particularly in the business community, as ineffective and insufficiently punitive.

The city does have a program for its “frequent flyers,” called the high-utilizer initiative, which Brown relaunched a few months after being sworn into office last year. That program is still diversion-first and focused on treatment, but it does have teeth, said Dr. Darin Neven, founder and CEO of Consistent Care and program director for the high-utilizer initiative.

“If they don’t want to work with us, then they do get fined and they do go to jail,” he said.

But while Neven supports there being consequences for refusing to engage – and in some cases believes forced treatment may be necessary – he still argues treatment and stabilization have to remain the focus for people whose addiction or mental health disorders keep them on the streets.

“If jail was so effective, then why do we still have this problem?” he asked. “A normal, engaged citizen who is afraid of jail will change their behavior because of jail – these people we’re working with, jail doesn’t work, because they’ve already lost everything.”

Critics frequently refer to another data point from the initial CORE program: Of the 143 people contacted, there were only 13 successful referrals to longer-term services, whether for mental health or for substance abuse disorders.

That’s to be expected, Neven argued.

“The sad reality is a lot of people with addiction need to go to treatment eight to 12 times to get some stability, and no one wants to hear that,” Neven said. “But we do not have a boot camp that says you’re going to go all the way through and get a job or a trade, but that’s not the way America works.”

The Spokane City Council will also vote on two related laws on June 16, one of which requires twice-a-year reports on progress. The other would expand when bad weather shelters open and require new city-funded shelters over a certain size to sign “good neighbor agreements.”

Another law on “aggressive” panhandling is effectively clerical, changing the chapter of city code where the ordinance is located.